Uhhhhh beats a shovel I guess. But I sure would like to see someone sitting on it in the backhoe operating position. I'm sure the block is out of the seat post and you swivel the seat. So it looks to me like you would be operating the levers between and below the level of your knees . That's gotta be good for your back . The muffler and tailpipe have to be from some car with those bends that just happened to be close enough in size to fit over the exhaust.

I think that it does have lateral-rear stabilizers on the backhoe unit itself. That bumper looks to be solid plate steel, doubled. That has to have some weight to it. Trying to figure out how it is mounted to the front of the tractor...

This guy actually has two listed, the other has a three point hitch set up. I might call him just to go check it out. No I'm not in a position to buy but I did get to the point on my 47 where I'm putting it back together. I might go see if he has any parts or implements.

As far as the digging, this area is an old sand dune so he probably never had a problem.

Not sure what kind of blade that is, but neither the blade or mounting hardware appear to be from a cub, plus when I enlarged the picture a little I am pretty sure that is not a cub hydraulic pump. Appears to have an adapter plate, with one line coming out the bottom of pump, and other out the top. Quite a bit bigger pump body than original also.